Brand building versus property products in an increasingly competitive market
One of the most important factors that successful marketers possess is the ability constantly to observe their customers' responses and adjust their tactics to thrive.
This is particularly so in an increasingly competitive market where everyone competes in terms of investment costs and creativity in producing outstanding products to meet the ever-growing demand of customers.
While these traits are necessary for marketers in all industries, they are vital in the property business, which requires increasingly high investments in land purchases as the rising costs have a corresponding effect on the prices of homes. Because of higher outlays, designers are forced to innovate products that allow corporations to manage their investments more easily while keeping prices competitive.
This constant challenge, faced by all brands across the property sector, is due to the tendency among customers to compare products and styles of new projects against older projects in the same brand that were constructed with lower investment costs.
To reduce customer perception that newer projects have inflated prices, corporations carve out new styles when developing new projects. This trend has become increasingly visible over the past year.
If we were to compare brand-building in other industries and their products, we will notice that most products will have relatively consistent packaging styles to reflect their proposition. Quite often, launches of new products are considered a “line extension”, and are usually sold alongside their existing best-selling lines. This allows the companies to distribute the products through the same channels and retain the same price range. If there are any changes, they tend to be relatively minor, and this environment allows branding efforts to have a sense of continuity and longevity.
In contrast, brand proposition of the property sector is characterised by its dynamism and flexibility because of constantly changing product offers and prices. For instance, AP (Thailand)’s condominium brand Rhythm may have sold a 35-square-metre unit for Bt3.5 million in the past, but today, the price of a 28sqm unit has risen to Bt3.78 million. In the past, a unit of that size under the sister brand Aspire sold for only Bt2.1 million in another location.
Therefore, even for products offered by different brands for different target customers, we can see that there are minor changes and overlaps between product offerings, and this situation is true even within the same brand itself over time, because of the proliferation of new project launches for business expansion. Thus it is important that marketers distinguish their brands, such as the way each project is decorated and through the use of materials that are discernibly different.
Another new change is the shift from managing brands by individual projects to seeing how every project fits into each other at the corporate level. This strategy forces marketers to establish unifying standards that would be deemed a part of each brand proposition, thereby differentiating it from its sibling brands and products.
This fundamental strategic change allows companies to leverage their investment costs and strengthen the corporation’s credibility, which has a direct influence on its customers’ decisions. This method also encourages cohesiveness and cooperation across the brands in the corporation while ensuring that every project is moving in the same direction of the overarching strategy.
It should be noted that short-term massive marketing and promotional campaigns are inappropriate for niche products such as property. It has been proved that ongoing subtle messages create a clearer brand image for the company and play a role in achieving sales targets. Therefore, it is important to seek publicity firms that are sufficiently experienced in the industry and have the willingness and capability of contributing to these long-term marketing efforts.
As a result, marketers have to adjust their strategies constantly to find their brand proposition and partner with advertising agencies that have a keen understanding of the business. To compare the efficacy of each agency, marketers have to devise indicators to assess their performance in an objective and fair manner, and analyse yield results to improve the brand’s overall performance.
